So, the main character in my novel had a traumatic event in his childhood that is crucial in developing who he is, and I was thinking of wheeling it out little by little in a series of dream sequences sort of like how M. Night Shamalamanaya does with Mel Gibson's character in the movie Signs or how he does it with Bruce Willis' character in The Sixth Sense. You know up front he's an orphan, so one knows the parents are dead, but the reveal in the final dream sequence really drives home an eye-opening ah-ha moment that links the GG with the BG. 1) is that utterly cliche as hell? 2) I guess I could have a newspaper article slip out of his notebook or have him sit down and explain everything in dialogue, but that doesn't seem very fun. What else have you people tried? 3) How do you handle the POV in a dream sequence in 3rd person limited? I guess I make the character 8 years old and see the world through his youthful eyes or can i assume that the adult character now looks through the child's eyes but sees it as an adult? 4) Technically, in setting up the dream sequence, he can either daydream the event or sleep dream it, so there's set up for that. But from there, what then? I was thinking of adding a blank line after the set up and then maybe putting the dream sequence in italics? Such as... (I'm just paraphrasing here so don't bother to edit it...). What's the best way to do it? He watched the headlights come and go in the darkness. The car was warm and his eyelids grew heavy as his head rested against the seatbelt housing next to the passenger-side window. It was times like these after a bad day when the sorrowful emotions took control and he wondered what life would have been had things been different for him. His thoughts and dreams blended into one, leading him down a rabbit hole of unbridled despair... -blank line- The wipers pulsed at top speed as Andrew sat strapped in his car seat in his family's SUV. He was eight years old again, with a sunburn on his arms and legs after a long day at the beach. He watched his dad adjust the vent setting before opting to wipe the glass with his elbow.. -blah blah blah another blank line- His eyes opened as Mrs. Wilson pulled to a stop in front of his house..... Thoughts? Suggestions? How do you people handle this? I know I'm lazy posting the question instead of researching it myself, but I value people's opinions here and you'all have been very helpful to me. TIA TrevorD
I'd shift to a distant invisible narrator and have him analyze the MC's thoughts like a therapist would. Just imagine that this is a scene from a movie and you're getting a voiceover of what the MC is experiencing, what the narrator imagines he must be seeing and how he's always been seeing it. Then you can even describe the MC tossing about in the bed, sweating, raking his nails at his own flesh. So you get the physical actions and stay in the real world. The MC wakes up but he's still seeing the dream. There could be a horrifying dread here. Then you rise into his waking POV. Later, you can even return to that analytical voice and it will call back the dream. I'm trying to think of a description of how that works . . . maybe Fight Club? It happens in the book and the movie. The narrator (the unnamed MC) lapses into these musings about books: "I am Jack's medulla oblongata. I am Jack's colon." And then later that voice returns for emotional impact: "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I am Jack's broken heart." So you can establish this strange dream-voice and pull it back later in the real world in a similar way. That's what I would do.
The only reason I would use a dream for something like this is if you want a distorted, surreal version of what happened, built around a core of emotional or symbolic truth, that's going to need to be unraveled gradually. This is how dreams actually work. If you want it to be what actually happened, I would use a flashback. I would write it exactly the way you did, but just don't say anything about his slipping into dream or sleep. A dream doesn't show you things that actually happened, not in any objective way. They're more like weird, distorted surreal versions of what happened. If something like this were revealed in a dream (in a story or movie) I would assume it needs to be interpreted or figured out stage by stage. Seeing a past event in an objective or truthful way is specifically the purpose of a flashback—to make it a dream instead would complicate things and make what's revealed seem suspect.
This could definitely work with a series of dreams, but you'd want to make the character have to think through what's actually truthfully revealed through the dreams, and what was surreal dream elaboration. It sounds like he's going to have to try to piece things together, and that makes sense since these are such early memories. Most people don't remember things from so early in life, and if they do the memories are probably far from objective or accurate. Just understand that if it's done through dreams there's an added element of separating which parts are accurate and which ones are misleading—maybe emotional amplification or dream distortion. I would have him wonder after each one about these things, and gradually be able to piece things together like solving a puzzle.
